"Dolores" means "sorrows": I'm putting that in the translation. Vicki Rosenzweig
Actually, dolores means "pains," in a very general sort of way, and it refers to the Virgen de los Dolores, the Virgin Mary in her role as the grieving mother, because she's the patron saint of the town of Dolores, where the Grito was done. (Because of the double meaning, there are a lot of —generally bad— puns on the phrase El Grito de Dolores, making fun of the roaring indigestion and hangover on the morning after the celebrations).
Anyway, I originally edited this entry because one of my pet peeves is that non-Mexicans think that the celebration of La Batalla de Puebla (a.k.a. Cinco de Mayo) is the most important Mexican national holiday. Here it only rates a day off work and a token military parade downtown, while El Grito is a smashing 16-hour party all around the country.
Then, for completeness, I dug up the official list of national holidays and put them in. NOTE: I did not include religious holidays because they're not fiestas patrias. So if anyone wants to add Easter Week, the day of the Virgen de Guadalupe, or Christmas, then the entry would have to be changed to "Mexican Holidays." mzamora
The page title seems completely inaccurate to me, and this is confirmed by the interwiki links, which both link to Mexican holidays. If the page's about that, why not rename it accordingly? Chilean holidays seem out of place here, altough they surely deserve their own page... as much as every (Spanish-speaking) country's. Amorim Parga 01:52, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
